Frederick Ferdinand Schafer Painting Catalog4. Legends and Myths about Frederick F. Schafer |
Biographical sketches and other sources include some stories for which there is not very good evidence one way or another. In this list, those that seem plausible are identified as legends; those that seem implausible are identified as myths.
...San Francisco people appear to have been his patrons...the well known Mr. Crocker of that city (Crocker Bank, etc.) was a mentor and grubstaked him on painting trips to the Sierras.The source of this information is unknown. Presumably, from the identification of San Francisco and the bank, this is a reference to the businessman Charles Crocker, rather than to his brother, the lawyer Edwin Crocker of Sacramento.
From a recent catalogue of a now-defunct gallery at 2217 Polk is a listing of "Sunset on Mt. Shasta from Cape Horn, 1880," "from the Crocker Estate." This view could only be secured from above the R.R. at that point so the very site specification of the title argues an arrangement of the artist with the R.R. for his convenience in reaching the emminence from whch Mt. Shasta could be seen. Crocker ownership is further indicative."
Since the collection of Edwin Crocker of Sacramento, which has been carefully documented by the Crocker Museum, does not mention any paintings by Schafer, the "Crocker Estate" reference also appears to be to the San Francisco Charles Crocker.
Though an alcoholic, producing much inferior work, when he took the necessary time he was able to create a presentable picture.Four years later, Dr. Stenzel expanded his biographical sketch of Schafer for the 1963 exhibition An Art Perspective of the Historic Pacific Northwest, saying
According to people who knew him, he fought against his tendency to alcoholism, though not always successfully. Some of his work is very good and some of it is equally bad. This would seem to be partially explained by his alcoholic problem.Dr. Stenzel's comment has been picked up and elaborated in several other biograpical sketches. However, in William K. Dick's 1975 interview with Schafer's grandson Frederick O. Hughes, who lived with Schafer from 1907 until his death in 1927, Hughes said with certainty that he never saw the old man drink.
In a 1990 telephone conversationnote 3, Dr. Stenzel recalled that he learned about Schafer's purported alcoholism in a conversation with the artist's wife, who was staying in an apartment in Portland. There is some reason for skepticism about this report: Schafer's wife, Sophia, died in 1924, when Dr. Stenzel would have been only 16 years old, but Dr. Stenzel is reported to have begun collecting art and information about artists in the 1950'snote 4. In addition, Schafer seems to have stopped painting and traveling by 1911, and his last verified visit to Portland was in 1890. Finally, severe alcoholism seems unlikely for a person who lived to the age of 88. It seems more likely that Dr. Stenzel's report correctly applies to some other visiting artist.
The following sentence appeared recently in a biographical sketch of Schafernote 5:
Yet another Panama traveler in the 1870s was Frederick Schafer, (1839-1927) the German landscapist, who arrived in California in 1877, after spending time in Mazatlan, Mexico.This report that Schafer traveled from Germany to San Francisco by way of Panama is a myth whose development can be traced in some detail with the help of the incorrect date--an October 1876 auction sale advertisement in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin establishes that he actually arrived earlier. Upon inquiring of the author of this sentence, it turned out that the report was based on a comment in William H. Gerdts, Art Across America, page 249, volume 3:
Another German landscapist who arrived in 1877 (in SF) was Frederick Schafer, who probably traveled via the Isthmus of Panama with a stop at Mazatlan...Gerdts does not provide a citation or source for his information about Schafer, but given the "probably" and the incorrect date of 1877 in his report, it is likely that his source is the 1985 exhibition catalog California Landscape Painting, 1860-1885 by Dwight Miller, in which Prof. Miller also gives the incorrect date and refers to a painting by Schafer titled "Mazatlan" that appeared in the 1880 Mechanics' Institute Fifteenth Industrial Exhibition in San Francisco, saying that this painting title
...suggests that he had visited Mexico on the trip West.
Miller's speculative suggestion of a visit became Gerdts's stronger suggestion "probably traveled via Panama" and then was transformed into the statement of fact "...who arrived in California in 1877, after spending time in Mazatlan, Mexico."
Curiously, the painting named "Mazatlan" has not emerged in modern times, so it is not known whether it was a painting of the Mexican seaport or of the German four-masted ship named Mazatlan, another popular subject for artists of that era. In any case the evidence that Schafer visited Central America is very shaky.
note 1: Frederick Ferdinand Schafer - The Rocky Mountain School. Undated typescript said to have been prepared by an unidentified museum volunteer from unknown sources sometime before 1998. Craigdarroch Castle Historical Museum Society, Victoria, British Columbia, file 983.795.
note 2: Elliot Evans to Mrs. [Hendrine] Kleinjan, 21 March 1962, on the letterhead of the California Pioneer Foundation (now known as the The Society of California Pioneers). Handwritten. In the The Alameda Free Public Library under "Frederick Schafer".
note 3: Personal (telephone) communication of the author with Franz Stenzel, M.D., 3 April 1990.
note 4: Obituary, (Portland, Oregon) Morning Oregonian Wednesday, 1 April 1998.
note 5: World-Wide Web site <http://www.askart.com/Interest/latin_a.asp>, March 28, 2002. (The website has since been changed to omit the quoted sentence.)
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| May 9, 2008, 21:43 MDT | Comments, corrections, or questions: Saltzer@mit.edu |